


69. empty fields

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [303]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 06:31:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10758657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “Breakfast?” Helena says hopefully.“When we’re on the road.”





	69. empty fields

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: brief reference to abuse]

Sarah wakes up first; something about the change in light through the wall of the tent sends a shock through her nervous system, snapping her eyes open. The world is grey with dirty pre-dawn light. She can make out the shape of Helena if she squints, and if she tilts her head a little bit she can see Helena’s face. Her mouth is open and she’s drooling. Gross.

Sarah sits up, quiet, pulls on a jacket and makes her careful way out of the tent. Helena’s eyes move back and forth under her eyelids as she dreams, but she doesn’t wake up. Outside the sun is rising. An exhaustion headache is settling between Sarah’s eyes; she doesn’t acknowledge it, just watches her breath plume out between her teeth. There’s a countdown ticking at the base of her spine: three days to find a dead man and bring him home to DYAD’s hungry open mouth. Three days to get Sarah’s brother out of jail. Tick tock.

She paces in circles around the tent. It doesn’t help. She’s starving, but she needs all the food to keep Helena pacified.

God. _Helena_ , who is here, who Sarah needs to keep pacified. Helena alive. Helena in the car with her last night, wearing Sarah’s brother’s jacket and saying _if we drive east we can be there tomorrow._ Helena saying _we_ , like she didn’t think anything of it. If Sarah breaks a branch underneath her foot Helena will wake up, and she will be here, and she will be alive. She doesn’t even have a knife. She’s just – _here_.

Like Sarah has summoned her (maybe she has) (maybe Helena can read Sarah’s thoughts, maybe she can feel Sarah thinking about her, Sarah would accept it, Sarah hates that she would accept it but she would), the tent unzips and Helena stumbles, sleepy, out of it. She rubs at her eyes with her fists, like a cartoon of a child. She yawns.

“Good morning,” she says. “How did you sleep.”

“Fine,” Sarah says. “Help me pack up the tent, we gotta get moving.”

Helena blinks at her, slow and sleepy-eyed. Wrapped in a bundle of knitted things she looks so _harmless_.

“Breakfast?” she says hopefully.

“When we’re on the road.”

Helena frowns but goes back into the tent. Sarah shifts from foot to foot, stomps her heel against the ground a few times, rubs her arms to try and warm up. She goes back in the tent. The warmth of two bodies is trapped in it, and it would be easy to curl up and go back to sleep. Tick tock goes Sarah’s countdown spine. When she looks at Helena, she sees Helena’s whole hand stuck in the can of beans. Helena pulls her hand out and licks congealed bean-juice off her fingers. Sarah makes a noise that is something like _eugh_.

Helena jumps. “Sorry,” she says, and she puts the can back down. She starts busily folding a pair of Felix’s pants, before realizing she has nowhere to put them and just sort of – petting them. Sarah rolls her eyes and reaches for the duffel.

“We will find him,” Helena says.

Sarah goes _mm_ and shoves clothing into the bag. She shifts up off her sleeping bag so she can cram it in there too. It’s a big duffel; she’s in a hurry. It doesn’t matter. S can yell at her when Felix is there in the background to roll his eyes in sympathy with either or both or none of them.

Sarah looks up from the bag, sees Helena staring at her wide-eyed. She’s still holding the pants. Sarah holds out a hand and Helena offers her the clothing; Sarah tosses that into the bag too.

“Sleeping bag?” she says. “Please?”

Helena starts rolling it up. Her eyes keep jumping to Sarah and then away again. Vic itches down the back of Sarah’s neck, and he’s laughing at the way all the lines of Helena’s body are screaming _be smaller, be smaller, you’re not small enough._

Sarah puts the bag down, pushes her hair out of her face. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s not your fault, just—”

“You’re worried,” Helena says, clumsy, eager. “About your family. I know. You care. About them.”

 _Them_.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “I care about all of you.” She looks down and tries to pull the zipper shut over the bulging duffel bag, focusing on that so she doesn’t have to look at Helena’s face. After a second or so Helena scoots forward and grabs the bag, so that Sarah can yank the zipper shut.

“Thanks,” Sarah says, and hoists the duffel over her shoulder. “I’m gonna throw this in the truck, yeah?”

“I can break tent,” Helena says.

Sarah stops, partway to standing. “Thanks,” she says again, only this time she’s looking at Helena when she says it. Helena ducks her eyes away from Sarah’s, shifts a little bit. A tiny pleased smile is hiding at the corner of her mouth.

“I want to help him also,” she says. “He is _sestra_ , like you said.”

“We’re gonna get Swan Man,” Sarah says, “and that’ll – that’ll get Fe back.”

“I know,” Helena says. She stands up and her hand hovers in the air for a second between them before she goes for it, and claps her palm onto Sarah’s shoulder. “If we are together we can find anything, I think.”

She leaves the tent before Sarah can give her an empty answer – just out through the doorway and gone, whistling something that scratches at the edge of Sarah’s memory. Sarah is left holding the duffel bag and looking around the tent like there’s something she missed, something left for her to do. There isn’t. She ducks out of the tent and back into the world – the sun has risen, probably, but the sky is heavy and grey with cloudcover. It’s a terrible day for a road trip, but hopefully it’s a good day to bring Ethan Duncan home.

Helena is leaning against the truck, rocking back and forth heel-toe, hands in the pockets of Felix’s jacket like she’s owned it for years. When Sarah leaves the tent she moseys back over, starts pulling the tent’s stakes out of the ground. Sarah leaves her too it, throws the bag in the back of the truck, starts letting the engine warm. She digs through the glovebox – papers, fake passports (what _is_ S’ truck), a map she doesn’t need – there.

Helena has the tent broken down by the time Sarah comes back over; she grins at Sarah from the dirt, pleased and proud. Sarah offers her the bag of trail mix and Helena makes a greedy sound, takes a fistful and shoves it in her face. Sarah grabs the tent, throws it in the back with the duffel. She turns around in time to watch Helena swallow an entire mouthful of trail mix and eagerly blurt: “Shotgun.”

Sarah opens her mouth. Various answers to that clatter against each other in her mind, and all that’s left is: “…yeah.”

Helena bounces to her feet and jumps into the truck, puts her feet on the dashboard, continues wolfing down trail mix. Sarah’s stomach growls again, but she doesn’t listen to it. She climbs into the driver’s seat of the truck – puts them into drive – pulls them onto the road. Helena pulls her feet off the dashboard and watches her. The urge to look back is itching at Sarah, but she ignores it.

It’s harder to ignore the bag of trail mix shoved in her face. “Breakfast?” Helena says.

“Yeah, alright,” Sarah sighs, and she grabs a handful of food.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
